It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

(*Movie quote*) - "Pip! Pip! Cheerio!"1946's "Terror By Night" is definitely not Film Noir. No way. It's a "Sherlock Holmes" crime-drama starring Basil Rathbone as everyone's favourite, Victorian-era, super-sleuth.On a speeding night-train heading from London to Edinburgh, Scotland - The priceless "Star of Rhodesia" diamond goes missing - And it's now up to the dynamic duo of Holmes and Watson to sift through a bevy of suspicious characters in order to recover this precious gem.Filled to overflowing with brilliant deductions, shadowed mystery, and deadly intrigue - "Terror By Night" moves along at a very brisk pace with its brief, 60-minute running time.

Good entry in the series. Roy William Neil frames and stages the action expertly on the train, and the repeated stock footage inserts don't distract too much. BIGGEST LIABILITY: Renee Godfrey as Vivian Vedder; her terrible British accent makes Dick Van Dyke in 'Mary Poppins' sound authentic. Everyone else in the cast is terrific, especially the woefully underused Skelton Knaggs in a bit part; he definitely puts the 'creep' in 'creepy.' Overall, a good example of what good, solid, studio craftsmanship could accomplish when a team worked together. In fact, Nigel Bruce once commented that he and Rathbone would be invited to see the rushes by Roy William Neil and allowed to make suggestions (sourse: basilrathbone.net.)

The penultimate outing for Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes sees him on board a train attempting to stop the famous diamond 'the Star of Rhodesia from being stolen, solving a murder, and coming up against (The Empty House's) Colonel Sebastian Moran.possibly fair to say that a little sparkle had gone out of the series by this stage, but it's still enjoyable nonetheless, not based on any one particular story, but it lightly borrows from The Blue Carbuncle, and Empty House.I love the fact that one of Professor Mortiarty's henchmen 'Colonel Sebastian Moran' was re-introduced, a truly interesting villain, perhaps not quite as I picture him, but a nice touch.The fact that this is more of a murder mystery too works quite well, it's nice to keep guessing til the end. The humour between LeStrade and Watson is also enjoyable. I think the only word for Skelton Knaggs's performance is shocking.The biggest negative is the running time, at just over 60 minutes it feels desperately short, but at least they decided not to pad it out.All in all though, pretty good. 7/10

This last-but-one of the Rathbone&Bruce 'Sherlock Holmes' adaptation, IMO, is neither a typical one nor one of the best entries in the series - in a whole train full of suspects, the huge diamond 'Star of Rhodesia', is being stolen, recovered and stolen again, and no less than three people are murdered for it; and, since Professor Moriarty by now seems to be 'finally' dead, there has to be a substitution for him for a battle of wits with Sherlock Holmes: the infamous jewel thief Sebastian Moran...Now, this is admittedly a REAL whodunit, because we have to guess until the last moment who is this Sebastian Moran - but how can we, with not only so many red herrings sticking out of every compartment door, but also without a really consistent story? A coffin with a secret chamber for someone to hide in, a hotel teapot 'thief', a dubious mathematician, a strange train guard... What are we to make of all that? Holmes, however, solves the case triumphantly and cunningly, as ever (and once again foreseeing ALL the traps the 'Moriarty successor' may have laid for him); but even at the end, it doesn't look really convincing to a classic whodunit fan...Anyway, there's no denying that this film, too, has got its special features that makes it worth watching, no matter how much it confuses us: there's the claustrophobic atmosphere of the train (some Agatha Christie feeling here...), there are some genuinely creepy and suspenseful moments - and there's more humor than we usually find in a 'Sherlock Holmes' movie (once again, chiefly thanks to our good friend Dr. Watson)! But then, it wasn't actually meant as a comedy...